“It’s cancer, Emilie.” Those words still ring though my head…That sounds so dramatic. Doesn’t it? But, sadly, it’s true.
Drama aside, we have to start somewhere and I’ll start this off at the beginning, when I discovered the lump. One evening in late May 2024, I discovered a lump in my left breast… it was kind of by accident. My twins were wrestling on the couch next to me and one of them careened into my chest and it REALLY hurt. It hurt more than it should have. I started feeling around and almost instantly I felt a large lump. I was shocked! I hadn’t felt that before! I immediately called Chris over and had him feel it. He said “You should call the doctor, just to be safe.”
I responded with,“It’s gotta be a cyst, I don’t think cancer can just appear like that… because it’s pretty big. I’ll make an appointment tomorrow.”
This felt like an inconvenience. Why? Well, my sweet second daughter had recently suffered an avulsion fracture on her knee cap and that increased the amount of weekly appointments for her as well as I had to help her keep her brace on, which was a feet in and of itself. Keeping things like braces on AND comfortable for an autistic child is a full time job. I was pretty worn out from that and now I had to make an appointment for myself? Ugh. (Classic special needs mom response to taking care of herself. Am I right?) Despite the overwhelm that I felt adding in another appointment, I did just that and had an appointment scheduled by the end of the week. I’m really proud of myself for not waiting and putting myself off. Turns out I needed to be prompt!
I love my doctor, she has always been so wonderful to work with, I felt very comfortable going to her with this…growth? She was surprised by the size too. I had just had an annual exam a few months earlier and she felt nothing in the left breast at that time. (Now, I wasn’t perfect at performing home exams every month, but I did check things out at least twice since I had seen her and hadn’t noticed a lump.) My doctor agreed with me and thought it was a cyst (due to it’s rapid growth) but she ordered a mammogram just to be safe. I felt that was the wise thing to do. I’m pretty sure Sally Jobe called me within the next couple of days to scheduled the mammogram for June 27th. If I’m being honest I did’t really think to much about the lump and all the possible “what ifs” after that, I didn’t really have time. Summer had just started and I had 4 kids home full time to take care of and make at least a couple of summer memories. Summer is wonderful and brutal for caregivers. IYKYK
Chris and I celebrated our 18 year anniversary with a night away in downtown Denver. We were carefree together, ate really yummy food, talked, listened to podcasts, and just celebrated the fact that we had been joyfully married married for 18 years. (Fun fact: we met when we were 18 – Babies. So at this point we had been married as long as we hadn’t known each other.)
We also took a family trip to Estes Park where we rented a VRBO with a hot tub and had a blast watching our kids have a blast. This felt like a very big deal to us because it’s hard for our autistic daughter to adjust to new environments. She did in fact have a hard time, but we all survived and adjusted – resulting in a very good time and a great memory. The kids still talk about that two night stay at least twice a week. I’m so glad we did that. Being in the mountains is so good for all of our souls.
The day of the mammogram finally arrived and I was surprisingly calm. This wasn’t my first time getting a mammogram but this was the first time I was calm before one. (My left breast has always been the problem child. After my pregnancy we were keeping an eye on some calcium deposits. Maybe it was after my pregnancy…It might have been before. Lets just put it this way, It wasn’t my first rodeo with the mammogram machine. But this was the first time I was doing it without being completely freaked out.) When I arrived at my appointment and did all the intake paperwork and whatnot I was told to go through “that door” and turn left. There I would find a women waiting with a warmed cropped top hospital gown for me to put on in the provided dressing rooms. (It’s actually kind of a fancy set up. I like being offered warmed clothing to put on.) After changing, I went to the waiting area where I and a bunch of other women were all dressed in our crop top hospital gowns waiting for our breasts to get smooshed. I happened to sit right across from the room that I was having my exam in and was surprised when a women emerged from said room and called my name. Still, I was calm. I entered the room and had my body placed in very unnatural positions in order to smoosh my breast correctly to get a good look at whatever was going on in there. After a couple uncomfortable minutes the tech told me I could cover up and asked me to wait in the room while she went to the doctor and had him take a look at the images. She returned to the room reporting that the doctor needed just a few more angles of the mass and went back to smooshing my left breast. This happened another two times. Yet, still I was calm. I think this was when it kind of hit me that I probably had cancer. Yet, I was still calm. After the final breast smoosh the doctor wanted me to get an ultrasound of my left breast. Everyone seemed a little more on edge. I think they knew I had cancer too but they had to act as normal as possible because there are a lot of things that have to happen before you actually get a cancer diagnosis. When the ultrasound was over a doctor came into the room and presented me with some options, either I could go in for a biopsy and see if the mass is cancerous or I could get am MRI and get more of a grasp on the breast tissue as a whole in my left breast. I opted for the MRI. I’m actually not sure why I chose the MRI. Maybe I was just too freaked out by the word “biopsy” and immediately chose the other option… who knows? I got that scheduled for the end of July.
In the meantime, Chris was in the middle of his own health saga. He was feeling winded and unusually tired, like really tired. His heart was beating irregularly at certain time of the day and it was kind of concerning. After seeing a cardiologist and running all the necessary testing he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and needed surgery to fix it. So yeah, Chris had to have Heart surgery before I had my MRI. I didn’t even really think about out the MRI until after Chris’s surgery. In that time between my mammogram and Chris’s heart surgery we made some pretty great memories. We enjoyed our summer with the kids and got a little get away with some friends to tube the Colorado river. It was amazing and fun and just such a silly time – LOTS of laughing. I love laughing with Chris. We drove through the mountains to get there and stopped in Chris’s old hometown of Kremmling Colorado. On the way home, Chris drove me around Kremmling and we went to his old high school and the field he played football on. My favorite memory of that getaway was Chris and I, hand in hand, walking the track that is around the football field that he played wide receiver on. I got to kind of kind of a snap shot of what his high school life was like. Ugh! I love him!
The next weekend was Chris’s surgery. There wasn’t really much nervous energy that day. It was strange knowing Chris was having heart surgery at 39 but we were glad we could get it done when he was still pretty young and had a better recovery time. Chris’s doctor came into the pre op room and charmed me with his humor and expertise. He explained to me what he was going to be doing to my husbands body and it made as much sense as it could and I was feeling pretty good about the whole situation. In fact, I wasn’t scared at all and had a pretty relaxing time waiting for his surgery to be completed. It was like I couldn’t even give time to the thought that this was a pretty big surgery and a look in the face of mortality. My only thought was “when I take him home” not “if I take him home” and I did take him home – THAT day! Yes! He had heart surgery during the day and that evening he was in our bed resting. Medical advancements are crazy. Chris did a wonderful job of recovering. He was back to his factory settings with his heart and had energy again. He told me he had to remind himself that he had just underwent heart surgery and slow things down a bit, so that’s how speedy his recovery was.
I’m so thankful that he had such a quick recovery because we were fast approaching my MRI. It was on Saturday, July 27th and I woke up on that morning ready to engage with the possibilities this MRI could present me with… and I was calm. Don’t get me wrong, I wished I didn’t have to do it, but I was calm. MRI’s are an EXPERIENCE. The process is loud and constricting. Thankfully I was able to listen to music of my choice so I OBVIOUSLY chose Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poet’s Department to accompany me during something I did’t want to do. Taylor makes even the most undesirable experience a little better. The doctors wanted images with contrast and I had to be injected with a liquid in my veins that provided that contrast… it kind of feels like peeing your pants when it is injected – strange.
The following Monday I got a call that I needed another ultrasound because the MRI discovered some “suspicious” tissues. (“Suspicious” is the word medical professionals use to describe what they think is bad but don’t have definitive evidence that something is bad). My primary care doctor called me after she got the results of my MRI. I remember the beginning of the phone conversation pretty clearly:
“Hi Emilie, How are you doing?” she said.
“I’m doing okay actually. How are you?” I responded
“Well I got the results back from your MRI and they found some suspicious tissue. Now I want to shoot straight with you. Do you want me to shoot straight with you, Emilie?” She asked.
“I do” I responded.
“It’s cancer, Emilie…you still need to have a biopsy to confirm, but the way your “suspicious” tissue looks is usually cancer. I just want to prepare you, to give you time to wrap your mind around it before you get the results back from our biopsy.”
The rest feels a little twilight zone-y but I remember mentioning that I had a feeling it was cancer during and after my mammogram and that I would appreciate her referrals for the best care she thinks would work for me. I know I wrote things down but when I went to read the notes afterwards they made no sense. Thankfully the medical community doesn’t take cancer very lightly and they have systems in place to call and make contact with cancer patient to schedule all the things. There were so many things. Experiences that I never even considered happening to me in 2024. Understandably, I had different plans for that year.
So that’s where I’m going to start this blog thing; with the events, feelings, and lessons gathered after I heard the words “It’s cancer, Emilie.”